Well, not quite, but references to decency, ethics and patriotism leave The Independent cold:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/news/nigel-farage-undressed-the-ukip-leaders-fuddyduddy-look-is-a-calculated-harkingback-to-postwar-patriotism-9789291.html
Not really Nigel's invention though. It could be straight out of the Pakeman catalogue.
No doubt there is some truth in the article, politicians almost invariably dress to project an image than will appeal to their target audience, consider for example, the pathetic attempts of Ed the Student Milliband and his Top Man look-alike suits. The Indie has focussed on the casual side of Farage's seemingly extensive wardrobe to try and cast him as a golfing, hunting, shooting fuddy duddy, which he may well be. But they conveniently ignore his business attire; a google image search on Nigel Farage shows up a page of photos, 95% of which show old Nige immaculately attired in a nice ( if you like that sort of thing) collection of suits, shirts and ties that other party leaders would do well to have a look at. I would say that Farage is the best dressed man in UK politics.
Mr FNB would do well to read this article, especially some of the 'saner' (?) comments at the bottom.
In farct, someone should cut and paste the article into this thread for discussion, not forgetting to attribute it first. Wouldn't want Dud to get upset.
What the article author failed to see is that Farange isnt manipulating anything, he is merely plugging into his times. In both UK/USA those clothes from an older, more potential/bounty laden world are all the rage. It isnt Farange manipulating his observers, it's what his observers want to wear and see themselves.
Besides, even if he were using clothing to his own end, isnt that partly what clothing is, a signaler of what you want people to think of you? What's the issues, that he is a slimy politician? if he wore a lizard suit (as most politicians should here in the USA), youd see him coming a mile away. This makes it easier to sneak up on people with only the telltale slithering tongue darting out between his lips from time to time. Someone would've had to have analyzed his wardrobe choices both for him and for his observers. It speaks volumes to the power of clothing. The author seems to find it all insidious, I think it's a message to people to learn about what clothes say. Clothes are imbued with class, wealth, education, ideological messages etc.
I suppose the author is simply saying that Farange is pretending to be someone he isnt. If that were true, then it would mean that people should wear clothes befitting their station and present state of mind which would suggest a class system and which would also A) destroy the author's own viewpoint that the past was indeed better than the present set of racist sentiments and modern global threats. and B) mean the vast majority of men now getting back into jacket and tie an absence of which is what we've all been moaning about for years should cease and desist.
Bottom line, clothing sends messages, messages Farange didnt invent (none of us did) and it is best to learn what those messages are.
Agreed, there is something, perhaps only seemingly, not contrived about Farage that is refreshing in the moribund and demographic appealing politics of Blighty.
Actually, on a sartorial front, only Tebbit comes across sartorially as being completely his own man of conviction.
The rest are dressing to perceived demographics revealed by tick-box surveys conducted in shopping precincts or car parks.
The author is like a lot of his ilk. Avant garde but thoroughly conventional, individualistic but totally lacking in individuality.
The kind of poisonous and semi-literate tripe (sporting a "tribally") that we might expect from a paper with an editor who sports ear-studs and a journalist like Fury who looks epicene and ambivalent as though he doesn't quite know where his beard should grow. Another example of some little guy purporting to speak outside his area of (purported) expertise: what does a fashion junky know about politics. As for Farrage himself - most people that I know dress more or less like that and, oblivious to all the trends coming and going, from painful, hipster trousers to poof-yellow jumpers, they always will. I really don't think that Farrage or they really think about it very much at all -they know what they like and they know where to get it. They just wouldn't want to change their clothing choices. But people with agendas of their own will try to suggest that the clothing is part of an agenda.
As for "post-war patriotism" - what twaddle - most people were glad to be free of the intense need to be patriotic and they wanted their freedom back and a new deal which Attlee's Labour party gave them BIG Time, starting with the GLORIOUS NHS - at which every modern government has been hacking away, so that they can avoid threatening national tax increases and thus avoid making themselves unpopular with the electorate. What people don't realize is that the burden for caring for the very old and the chronically sick, who cannot fund their own care, is being cast onto local authorities - who have to raise community charges accordingly as though under some new Poor Law funded by a stealth tax.
Last edited by Dudley Clarke (2014-10-12 09:29:03)
Last edited by Dudley Clarke (2014-10-12 11:50:32)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCadcBR95oU
And Johnny Rotten dresses a lot like Nige these days. Well, at least in his butter commercials he does.
Lydon was good in the interview on Channel 4 News last week, much too short. His face looks droopy, as if he has slightly melted, his ear lobes especially.